Friday, July 25, 2014

Eating Garden Snails (Cornu aspersum previously Helix aspersa)

I've set up a box for snails and it's currently got about 100 inhabitants. Among the plant pots there's also a tray of soil (with the hope they will lay eggs here), a plate of food, and a piece of cuttlefish bone for the calcium for their shells. I want to build a table of foods they eat and don't eat, I'll use my own experience and also information from other web pages... I took some information from this link

They Ate:

Cucumber
Tomato
Carrots
Cabbage Turnip Leaves
Carrot Leaves
Aubergine peel
Oatmeal
Egg Shells (might need to be sterilised)
Broccoli stalk (boiled) - they ate this fast
Broccoli stalk (raw); they ate this as fast as they ate the boiled one
Hogweed leaves (Heracleum sphondylium) - they ate these fast
Nettle leaves, chopped up and kept in the fridge until they turned a dark grey/brown - ate these fast
Clover leaves (I don't think they ate the stems)
Potato slices (boiled)
Lettuce leaves (they eat the leafy part at least)
Melon rind, stripped to a thin sliver
Sweet Cicely leaves (Myrrhis odorata), they ate these very quickly
Greater Plantain leaves (Plantago major)
Runner beans (boiled)
Chicken piece (cooked/curried), eaten on the second night of being in the enclosure
Blackberries, eaten on the second night of being in the enclosure

They Didn't Eat:

Gooseberries
Tomato leaves
Grass stalks and blades
clover stalks and leaf stem
Shiitake mushroom (dried and re-hydrated, past their expiry date)

From the wild/hedgerow/garden:

Hogweed leaves (Heracleum sphondylium) - they ate these fast
Nettle leaves, chopped up and kept in the fridge until they turned a dark grey/brown - ate these fast
Clover leaves (I don't think they ate the stems)
Sweet Cicely leaves (Myrrhis odorata), they ate these very quickly
Greater Plantain leaves (Plantago major)
Blackberries, eaten on the second night of being in the enclosure

From the shop:

Cucumber
Tomato
Carrots
Aubergine peel
Oatmeal
Egg Shells (might need to be sterilised)
Broccoli stalk (boiled) - they ate this fast
Broccoli stalk (raw); they ate this as fast as they ate the boiled one
Potato slices (boiled)
Lettuce leaves (they eat the leafy part at least)
Melon rind, stripped to a sliver
Runner beans (boiled)
Chicken piece (cooked/curried), eaten on the second night of being in the enclosure
Blackberries, eaten on the second night of being in the enclosure
 
From the vegetable garden:

Cucumber
Tomato
Carrots
Cabbage Turnip Leaves
Carrot Leaves
Potato slices (boiled)
Lettuce leaves (they eat the leafy part at least)

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